Many digital products started as side projects, often built by a single person. Photopea, the free browser-based image editor, began as a student’s hobby. Adam Wathan sold his first book while working as a developer, and Tailwind Labs grew from there. Once made, a digital product can be sold again and again without more work per sale.
In this guide
- At a glance
- What counts as a digital product
- Why they suit a side project
- The stories in this group
- What these stories have in common
- If you are building one
- More digital product stories on the way
- Frequently asked questions
At a glance
| Product | Started | Built alongside | Where it went |
|---|---|---|---|
| Photopea | 2012 | A computer science degree | Ad-funded, over $3 million a year (reported) |
| Adam Wathan’s books and Tailwind | 2016 | A developer job at Tighten | Tailwind Labs, joining Shopify announced in 2026 |
Figures come from the full stories, where each one is sourced.
What counts as a digital product
In this group, a digital product is something made once and delivered online: a tool that runs in the browser, an ebook, a set of templates or icons, a course or a game. The line with software companies is not always sharp. We put a story here when the business is built around a product a person or a small team makes and sells, rather than around a software service with subscribers and support.
Why they suit a side project
A digital product can be built entirely on the founder’s own time and sold without the founder being present. That makes it a natural fit for the evenings.
There is also a ladder effect. A first small product builds an audience and some income; a second one sells to that audience; and over time the products can add up to a business. Wathan’s story follows that ladder almost exactly.
The risk is the opposite of a service business. A service pays from the first client; a digital product can take months to make and then sell nothing. The stories in this group show founders managing that risk by starting small, giving things away or building on something they had already shared.
The stories in this group
Photopea. Ivan Kutskir was born in Ukraine and moved to Prague in 2009 to study computer science at Charles University. As a student he made small web games with banner ads, which earned him between $100 and $400 a month. At one point he had around 20 projects going at once.
In 2012 he set himself a narrow problem: a web page that could open a Photoshop file and let people switch its layers on and off. The viewer went online in 2013. It was not coursework and it had no plan; in his words, he was just playing around. People used it and asked for more, so he kept adding features until the viewer became an editor. By his account it took about 7,000 hours, roughly five hours a day for three and a half years, before Photopea made any money.
He graduated in 2016 and worked on it full time. He switched on ads in 2017, and the first month brought in about $500. In a 2021 Failory interview he put the figures at about 10 million visits a month and roughly $100,000 a month in ad revenue. Most of his own attempts at promotion failed; what worked was users writing about it and making tutorials. Read the full story: Photopea: The Student Hobby That Became a Free Photoshop.
Adam Wathan and Tailwind. Adam Wathan was a developer at Tighten, a software consultancy, who also hosted a podcast and wrote a blog. In 2016 he released Refactoring to Collections, a book and video course for PHP developers. It made $61,392 in its first week, and he quit his job.
He kept building side projects. For one of them, KiteTail, he wrote a set of small, single-purpose CSS classes while live-streaming his work, and viewers started asking about it. KiteTail was abandoned; the CSS survived, was generalised with his friend Jonathan Reinink, and became Tailwind CSS, released free in November 2017. With designer Steve Schoger he then wrote Refactoring UI, which Wathan says has passed $2.5 million in sales. In 2019 the three founded Tailwind Labs, and its paid component library, Tailwind UI, was close to $2 million in revenue about five months after launch.
In January 2026 Wathan disclosed that revenue had fallen by close to 80%, as developers asked AI tools for Tailwind code instead of visiting the documentation that led to the paid products. In September 2026 Tailwind Labs announced it was joining Shopify. Read the full story: Adam Wathan: From Side-Project Books to Tailwind CSS.
What these stories have in common
The two stories look very different, one free tool funded by ads and one set of paid books and templates, but they share three features.
Something free came first. Photopea was free from the start and earned through advertising. Tailwind CSS was free and open source; the money came from books, templates and components around it. In both cases a free product built the audience that later paid.
One person did most of the early work. Kutskir built Photopea almost alone for years. Wathan wrote his first book on his own before working with partners. Digital products make it possible for one person to build something used by millions, which is part of why they suit side projects.
The audience came from the work itself. Neither founder relied on advertising campaigns. People found Photopea because it solved a problem, and developers found Wathan through his writing, streams and open source code. The product was its own marketing.
If you are building one
These two stories suggest a few practical rules for a digital product built in spare hours.
Sell what you already know. Wathan’s first book taught what he did every day as a developer. A first product drawn from your own expertise is faster to make and easier to trust.
Work in public. Tailwind exists because people watched Wathan stream an abandoned project. Sharing work in progress turns a private side project into a source of feedback and an audience.
Expect the slow years. Photopea took about 7,000 hours before it made money. If the work is enjoyable on its own, as it was for Kutskir, the slow years are survivable.
Do not depend on one channel. Tailwind Labs found its customers through its documentation, and lost much of that traffic when AI changed how developers look for answers. A digital product business is safer with more than one way of being found.
More digital product stories on the way
The 5 to 9 is adding digital product stories every week. Coming next in this group are Font Awesome, Dave Gandy’s icon set; Wordle, a word game made for his partner and later sold; Minecraft, built in its creator’s free time; The Martian, a novel first published free on a blog by a software engineer; Wool, a self-published series written while working a day job; and ClickMinded, SEO training built while its founder worked at Airbnb.
All the stories published so far are listed below and on the All stories page.
Frequently asked questions
Which digital products started as side projects?
Among the stories covered here, Photopea started as a student’s hobby and Adam Wathan’s first book was written while he worked as a developer. Font Awesome, Wordle, Minecraft, The Martian, Wool and ClickMinded also began as side projects and will be covered in this group.
Can a free product make money?
Yes, in two ways shown here. Photopea is free to use and earns mostly from advertising, with premium accounts and licensing on top. Tailwind CSS is free and open source, and its creators earned from books, templates and components sold to the people who used it.
How long does it take for a digital product to earn money?
It varies a lot. Wathan’s first book made $61,392 in its first week, partly because he had built an audience with his writing and podcast. Photopea took about 7,000 hours of work before it earned anything.
What can go wrong with a digital product business?
Distribution can change. Tailwind Labs disclosed in 2026 that revenue had fallen by close to 80% after AI tools reduced visits to its documentation, which was how most people discovered its paid products.